Nick Nicked

Over the last few years I have been playing, and playing, and deleting, then undeleting, and playing Out of the Park Baseball. It has altered my brain chemistry in many ways, good and bad. It’s a game where you can manage and/or work in the front office of a major league baseball team, from either back in the past or in the present day. Just describing it makes me want to play it again right now, but no, I have this newsletter to do.

I’ve learned a few things playing OOTP for so long, most notably, 1)I might have an addictive personality and 2)it’s hard to be a GM/President of Baseball Operations. 

Yeah, no kidding it’s hard to be a general manager or POBO. I knew this and I’ve said this plenty of times. But really, I was just kind of guessing before. Folks from Harvard or another Ivy tend to get the jobs, and they always have to work on a budget set by the owner that is much lower than it should - it must be hard. And those are true, however what really opened my eyes was that, inevitably, after an offseason of meticulous work building a team projected to finish as a division champion or better in OOTP, a key player gets injured and throws everything into chaos. And because you respect budgets, it’s not like you built a bench or farm system full of major league dudes. All of your work for nothing but heartache. God, what a stupid game. I hate it. 

Mets POBO David Stearns had a plan for 2025, and part of that plan involved Nick Madrigal. As unimpressive as he is with the bat, he’s valuable as an infield glove. And most importantly, he has minor league options left to play with. For reasons that will be further explored shortly, Madrigal was the leading candidate to get that 26th and final spot on the Opening Day roster as the backup infielder. Emphasis on was, past tense, because in his first inning of work this spring, before he could even get a chance to bat, Madrigal dislocated his left shoulder on this play:

Because the MASN telecast was pretty weak, they didn’t show a close-up of Madrigal’s attempt at throwing Luis García Jr. out on a ground ball off of pitcher Ty Adcock. Therefore I told my computer, “Computer: Enhance.” Nothing happened. So I did it manually, like a schmuck.

It’s his left shoulder that is dislocated, not connected to the arm that desperately threw the ball to first base. I wish we could have seen how he landed. Or not. 

Madrigal left the game immediately, off-camera. He was there one moment and then he wasn’t. Doctor Google says it takes up to 12 weeks to heal from a dislocated shoulder, and up to 16 weeks to return to playing certain sports. Doctor Google isn’t 100 percent reliable though. I mean, you don’t even need insurance to get their diagnosis. Shady. 

Still, it sounds bad. Madrigal will get an MRI today and more will be known regarding his near future. In the meantime, let’s wildly speculate on what this means. 

The Mets get to have 26 dudes on their Opening Day roster. 13 of those players will be pitchers. Nine make up the starting lineup. That leaves four spots to ride the pine. The backup catcher has to be one (Luis Torrens). Whoever isn’t playing center field between Tyrone Taylor and Jose Siri takes up another spot. Starling Marte, if healthy enough, is the third bench player when Jesse Winker is taking up the DH spot. That leaves one slot for a backup infielder. Besides Madrigal, Luisangel Acuña, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, Donovan Walton and Jared Young are the candidates to go to Houston with the big league club when the real games start. 

It’s unclear if the real Acuña is the one who had a ton of Triple-A at-bats last year and wasn’t impressive or the guy for two weeks in the bigs tore the ball up. Besides, sitting on the bench instead of getting to play everyday like he would in Syracuse might ruin his development. He is impressing the team right now by not leaving Francisco Lindor’s side and asking him a ton of technical questions about playing shortstop. He worked with older bro Ronald on his hitting over the offseason. Those are some decent mentors to have.

Brett Baty has gotten chances before and disappointed. @samxWoba02 on Twitter provided a visual aid.

Besides, asking Baty to serve as the de facto backup shortstop to Lindor is a stretch, which is something Baty would have to do often to make up for his lack of range for that position. I will say Baty provided the one Met highlight in their other game yesterday, an eventual 1-1 tie against the Marlins in Port St. Lucie.

The pitch was middle-middle and Baty took advantage, hitting the ball with an exit velocity of 110.4 mph. He later scored the Mets’ lone run of the day (off a balk, which was the catcher’s fault, but that’s for the Marlins newsletter.) Wearing #7 now, Baty really did kind of look like childhood idol Joe Mauer there. Kinda. If you squint and are fond of daydreaming. (Brett needs to grow some sideburns.) 

Mauricio, who we all agree is going to be a stud, probably won’t be 100 percent rarin’ to go by late March. 

Donovan Walton is Donovan Walton. Walton though sounds like the answer to a way too hard trivia question, doesn’t he? Like how Anderson Hernandez was technically Opening Day second baseman in 2006. 

Jared Young is Jared Young, and doesn’t play up the middle at all. So there’s no clear candidate.

What’s that I hear?

Oh goodness, that’s Candelita’s music.

He’s still just a free agent boy, waiting at the recording studio and on his couch, commenting on official Mets Instagram posts like he’s still on the squad, asking the Mets to love him.

The Mets lost 11-6 in their split-squad game in West Palm Beach. It was a mess. Allow T.J. Shook to demonstrate the importance of working on PFPs:

The Nationals broadcast didn’t feature a K-Zone, and neither the ABS challenge system nor Statcast metrics were available at The Park of the Palm Beaches. It felt like watching a game from 1937, for crying out loud. We have no idea how far this bomb by Simon Juan truly went. 

Let’s go with 600 feet. Why not? The homer was impressive, considering the number of fly balls that got caught up in the wind yesterday. Before the pitch, Juan had a smile on his face, like he knew he was about to have some fun.

It definitely was a MLB game played in February. Shook actually came back to pitch the 7th inning, even though he already departed after the 2nd. The Mets in the late stages of the contest replaced Luis De Los Santos with Jefrey De Los Santos, and swapped out Luke Ritter for Omar De Los Santos. Someone asked on Bluesky if the Mets employ all of the De Los Santoses in baseball. It turns out no, they don’t have a monopoly on them, but they currently employ the most if I’m reading things right. New market inefficiency?

Max Kranick impressed in his two scoreless innings of work over at Port St. Lucie. The Mets are trying to employ him as a multi-inning reliever, a la Reed Garrett and Jose Buttó. The 27-year-old was picked up off waivers from the Pirates in January 2024. He spent most of the year in Triple-A. He was on the Mets’ Wild Card Series roster but was never needed. He grew up a Met fan. Yesterday he told Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez on the SNY broadcast that he remembers Endy Chavez’s home run robbery in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS “like it was yesterday.” 

Mark Vientos is working on his lateral movement after Mets staff told him it was a problem. David Stearns was surprisingly honest about it to the media. “Mark is never going to have the Matt Chapman lateral range,” he admitted. “But we do think there are ways he can improve versus what we saw last year. And he worked really hard at that. And I think we will see improvement on the lateral range.” Stearns didn’t pull Matt Chapman’s name out of his behind - Chappy led all third basemen in Outs Above Average with an 11 OAA. Vientos ranked 37th at -6. So of course in yesterday’s game his mistake was not charging a soft grounder. Then again it’s nitpicking: he turned the double play anyway. 

While both Met squads wore the alt road jerseys for this year that are doubling as their spring training tops, the home team vs the Marlins wore the pinstriped pants, whereas the split squad playing the Nationals wore the single stripe pants. Not that I care.

We found out more info on Sean Manaea’s meeting with his childhood hero Johan Santana. Carlos Mendoza found out Manaea grew up idolizing Santana the same way we all did: via social media. Mendoza “sequestered” Johan until Manaea showed up to Clover Park on Saturday, so he was in total shock when Santana approached him while he was eating breakfast and went in for a handshake. “Thirteen-year-old Sean was geeking out,” Manaea said. “Thirty-three-year-old Sean was, too.” Aw. 

Nohan of course talked to Manaea about his trademark circle change, and Manaea later joked maybe he’ll have a good change-up this season. (He only threw it 11.8 percent of the time in 2024.) 

In case you were wondering why the Mets only play the same four teams during most of the spring, here’s a map of the Grapefruit League from SNY.

A player with the terrific name Travis Swaggerty dropped a fly ball in center field, but he suavely threw to second to get a force out.

Pitcher Jordan Geber climbed the hill for the Mets yesterday for an inning of work. He was an undrafted free agent signing from Virginia Tech by the Mets. Geber went undrafted because of a 2022 car accident that left him with concussion issues. He made it all the way to Triple-A last season.

Francisco Lindor, in his ongoing passive aggressive battle with Brandon Nimmo to be considered The Nicest Met, held a clinic for Port St. Lucie kids. 

In an embarrassing moment, pinch runner A.J. Ewing did not touch second base going back to first. You literally had one job. It’s bad enough you’re named after the most annoying character on The Sopranos.

William Lugo played first base on Saturday. Yesterday, he was at short. Diego Mosquera went from playing second base Saturday to manning left field on Sunday. The Mets: They’re Flexible.

The Tiki Bar in Port St. Lucie is now the Cutwater Corner, and SNY is allowed to show it, unlike back in 2006.

“There’s an energy in Mets camp that’s different,” former Reds GM Jim Bowden said. Saying the vibes or energy or spirits are good/different is a cliche, but when it comes from someone outside of the organization it might actually be true.

Today Blade Tidwell and the Mets travel to Jupiter to face the Cardinals, who will be starting off with…Steven Matz on the mound. Did you know Matz is from Long Island?